Just think, if he hadn't played drums in the Jacksonville State University marching band, life might have taken a different path for Dean Robb.

Maybe he would be back home in Illinois, where, for the first 14 years of his life, he grew up in a small town of about 1,400 people.

Perhaps he wouldn't have gotten that job tending bar at Anniston Country Club, a part-time gig that led to a lifelong career in the hospitality industry.

Likely, he never would've met Frank Stitt, the James Beard Award-winning chef who hired Robb to help run his Bottega restaurant back in the early 1990s and has been a friend and inspiration ever since.

And possibly, he wouldn't be sitting where he is today, in a window seat at Birmingham's hottest new restaurant, Blueprint on 3rd, a bustling American brasserie that Robb and his business partners recently opened in the Pepper Place development.

"No, probably not," the veteran Birmingham restaurateur says in response to the proverbial what-if question. "I don't know. I would say that (drumming) had a lot to do with it. It got me here."

Tanned and wiry with a familiar face and a friendly smile, the 58-year-old Robb has been around Birmingham so long that perhaps you, like some of us, just thought that he's always been here, that he came with the territory.

You probably remember him from his days at Bottega, where, from 1991 to 2008, he was the restaurant's managing partner and Stitt's righthand man.

Or maybe you saw him at the DoDiYos, the Mediterranean restaurant that Robb opened with fellow Birmingham restaurateurs George Sarris and Connie Kanakis in Homewood's SoHo Square in 2009.

And if you go all the way back to the mid-1980s, you might recall Robb from his days at Anniston's old Victoria Inn, the restaurant and hotel he opened and ran for five years.

Robb, though, also has an engaging backstory, and the next time you visit his new restaurant and he comes up to your table to say hello, he might just share it with you.

He does, after all, have the gift for gab.

Blueprint on 3rd, the new restaurant from veteran Birmingham restaurateur Dean Robb, is in the old Birmingham Blue Print Co. building at 3000 Third Ave. South. (Photo by Jenny Walls Robb)

From the cornfields to the suburbs

His story begins in Wyoming, Ill., a small town in the middle of a cornfield about 30 miles northwest of Peoria and where his father, Bill Robb, sold insurance for State Farm and tractors, combines and other farm equipment for White Motor Co.

That's where Robb first started beating on the drums, learning to play on a trap set that he bought in the fifth grade with money he had saved from mowing lawns.

Before his sophomore year of high school, his father was transferred to suburban Atlanta, where Robb quickly discovered he was just another fish in a very big pond.

"Actually, that move probably made me who I am today -- understanding the difference between an itty-bitty town and a huge social situation like that," he says now. "I wanted to be right in the middle of it, but I had to try a lot harder."

At Southwest DeKalb High School, the student body of 2,200 was more than the entire population of the Illinois town he had left behind, and to keep from getting lost in the crowd, Robb joined the marching band. He also played on the basketball and golf teams.

"What I found out was, you either rise to the occasion or you fade away," he says. "I was supposedly this bad-ass drummer in this little town (in Illinois), but the first time I got to play (in Atlanta), they made me play cymbals because I wasn't good enough yet.''

Robb fine-tuned his chops, though, and worked his way up from cymbals to bass drum to snare drum. By his junior year, he made all-state and was next in line to be the section leader on the snare line his senior year.

But his father got transferred again, and the family moved back to the Midwest, to Charles City, Iowa, where Robb was again selected all-state.

So when it came time for college, he decided to head back down South, to Alabama, and attend Jacksonville State University, where many of his band buddies that he had met in Atlanta were also planning to go.

"I was a big drummer, one of the top six in the country, and Jacksonville State has a great music program," he says. "A lot of those kids who went to Southwest DeKalb who wanted to continue on in a music situation went to Jacksonville State."

The zinc bar at Blueprint on 3rd was inspired by one of Dean Robb's favorite Chicago restaurants, Au Chavel. (Photo by Jenny Walls Robb)

From a part-time job to a full-time career

Robb's time at Jacksonville State was momentarily interrupted when, after a semester, he moved back to Iowa to be closer to his girlfriend, but he came back and marched with JSU's Southerners for three years, playing the quad tenor drums.

He had planned to go to law school but instead stayed at Jax State to get his MBA, and one night, a buddy from the marching band asked him to help tend bar at Anniston Country Club.

"I started off as a bartender, and they asked me if I wanted to run the dining room after about six months or so because I was good with the guests," Robb says. "I gave that a shot, and some nights, I would go work as the chef.

"I ended up being the F&B (food and beverage) director for the club by the time I graduated. And that's when I knew I wanted to stay in this business.''

After college, Robb went to work for the S&A Restaurant Corp., which operated Steak and Ale and Bennigan's restaurants nationwide, and he was sent to Birmingham to train at the old Bennigan's pub and grill on Vulcan Road in Homewood. He moved on to manage the New Orleans and Memphis markets.

Later, some people whom Robb knew from his days at Anniston Country Club approached him about opening a restaurant and inn in an 1880s mansion known on Anniston's Quintard Avenue.

"They wanted somebody that knew everybody in town, and that was kind of me," he says.

So, at the age of 25, Robb opened the Victoria Inn, managing both the restaurant and the hotel.

He hired a couple of chefs, Eric Reser and Vern Montgomery, who had previously worked at Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham.

"Basically, I got two chefs for one," he says. "And they both had worked at Highlands. So, I rented a house and moved all three of us in together."

The roasted beet salad from executive chef James "Huck" Huckaby is one of the more popular salads on the menu at Blueprint on 3rd. (Photo by Jenny Walls Robb)

A one-year deal turns into 17

It was through that connection that Robb came to know Frank Stitt, the celebrated Birmingham chef who occasionally stayed at the Victoria Inn for a weekend retreat.

A few years later, after Robb had left the Victoria Inn, Stitt interviewed him to be his managing partner at Bottega, the Italian restaurant that Stitt opened in 1988, six years after launching Highlands Bar and Grill.

Asked in the interview why Stitt should hire him, the self-assured Robb replied: "Because I make money everywhere I go."

A one-year deal turned into 17.

"They were looking for a GM, and we did kind of a one-year handshake (agreement)," Robb says. "Friendship was No. 1. We wanted to be friends and be really honest with each other.

"I used to laugh that it was the longest 17-year, one-year handshake ever," he adds. "I enjoyed my time working with Frank big-time. It was mutually beneficial for everyone."

It was at Bottega that Robb also met his second wife, Jenny Walls, whom he hired to be a server. They started dating shortly thereafter.

"She had to resign relatively quickly," he recalls. "It wasn't like I was being unfair or showing favoritism to her, but perception is reality."

Just before he left Bottega in 2008, Robb got an offer that was too good to refuse, when he was approached to open the Nashville fine-dining restaurant Watermark. He later opened a second Music City eatery, Miro District Food & Drink.

He returned to Birmingham after about a year to start DoDiYos in Homewood, and then worked briefly as the food and beverage manager at The Club before spending five years with the Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe chain, where he was vice president of operations.

Dean Robb chats with Little Rock, Ark., restaurateur Jim Keet, left, who is one of Robb's partners in Blueprint on 3rd. A drink on the cocktail menu at the restaurant is named for Keet. (Photo by Jenny Walls Robb)

Opening a place of his own

A couple of years ago, though, tiring of being on the road, Robb got the itch to open a restaurant he could call his very own.

Little Rock, Ark., restaurateur Jim Keet, with whom Robb had worked at Taziki's, had recently stepped down as the Taziki's CEO, and the two agreed to become partners in Robb's new project. (The Keet 151 on the cocktail menu is a tribute to Keet's 151st restaurant opening.)

Birmingham businessman and philanthropist Charles Collat, the former CEO of Mayer Electric Supply Company, also came on as a partner.

Robb looked at about 20 locations all around town until, a little more than a year ago, he found the space he wanted when he drove by the abandoned Birmingham Blue Print building on Third Avenue South.

"It said: 'For lease: Sloss Real Estate,'" he recalls. "I was like, I have Cathy's (Sloss Jones) number in my cell phone; we've been friends for 25 years.' I called her. She was in town. I said, 'I want to look at this space; what do you think about it being a restaurant?' She said, 'You come to my office right now.'

"There was no paperwork or anything, but an hour later, I kind of knew that this was going to be the place."

Robb signed the lease in June 2017 and began the buildout about six months later, transforming the empty brick building into a "polished casual" Chicago-style neighborhood restaurant, with schoolhouse pendant lighting, a zinc-topped bar, an energetic vibe and a comfortable menu.

"I knew one thing," Robb says. "I knew it would be the most expensive of all the ideas, but I didn't really care. This is what I wanted the restaurant to look like. The way to do that is to gut a warehouse and put it in exactly the way you want it."

Several months before Blueprint on 3rd opened, Robb was meeting with his restaurant manager Sean Wattson and his bar manager Rick Bratton and talking about his plans for hiring an executive chef.

As they turned a corner, Robb looked around and saw another old friend from his past walking down 30th Street South toward the restaurant.

It was James Huckaby -- or "Huck," as everybody calls him -- whom Robb had first hired to work in the dining room at Bottega back in the mid-1990s. Huckaby soon moved into the kitchen and quickly rose through the ranks to become sous chef at Highlands Bar and Grill and chef de cuisine at Chez Fonfon, Frank Stitt's French bistro. More recently, he was the head chef at Edward's Fine Food & Wine in Rosemary Beach.

Huckaby showed up at Blueprint on 3rd that day just to see what his old buddy Robb was up to.

"He was looking for this place because he had heard that I was going to open it," Robb says. "I looked at Sean and Rick, and I said, 'If that man accepts the job, that's going to be our chef.'''

They sealed the deal later that afternoon over a bottle of wine at Robb's house in Forest Park.

At Blueprint on 3rd, Robb and Huckaby have collaborated on an American-influenced menu that features regional favorites from around the country, including a Hangtown Fry po-boy, steamed mussels, a Blueprint poutine, and duck and dumplings.

"I told Huck that I would give him carte blanche," Robb says. "I said, 'Here's my menu; I want you to make it 100 percent your menu.' So there is a good bit of the personality from both of us in it."

The beauty of being his own boss is that Robb gets to change that menu whenever he likes.

"I don't have to write any letters or discuss it with anybody or do a tasting panel with six people who don't know (anything) about food. If I want to change it, it's changing tonight.

"There is no chain of command," he adds. "We're all a group here. It's a nice collaborative."

It is also a family affair for Robb.

His wife, Jenny, a tennis instructor, helps with front-of-the-house hospitality and shoots photographs for the restaurant's social media accounts, and his son, Brandon, who previously worked at DePalma's Italian Cafe in Tuscaloosa and OvenBird in Birmingham, is the head server.

Since Blueprint on 3rd opened in mid-June, business has exceeded projections, Robb says, and it has steadily grown each week as word has gotten around that Dean Robb is back in town.

"This is my wheelhouse," Robb beams. "Everybody keeps saying the same thing over and over again -- that this is my comfort zone."

"After six years going under the radar, I wondered whether anybody even remembered who I was," he says. "They do. They're back."

Blueprint on 3rd is at 3000 Third Ave. South in Birmingham. Dinner hours are 5 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. For reservations and more information, call 205-479-3000 or go to www.blueprinton3rd.com.